{this moment}

{this moment} - A Friday ritual. A single photo - no words - capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember.

{this moment}

{this moment} - A Friday ritual. A single photo - no words - capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember.

{this moment}

{this moment} - A Friday ritual. A single photo - no words - capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember.

{this moment}

{this moment} - A Friday ritual. A single photo - no words - capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember.

{this moment}

{this moment} - A Friday ritual. A single photo - no words - capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember.

Here is my gal again with tools, she just loves them so much and also her daddy. She is a daddy's girl through and through. I told Dan the other day that it is a good thing I have the milk or I may not get enough cuddles to prevent this mama from shriveling up and dieing! :)

And another one, we had to get a carseat for Leili and she loves to get into boxes, so the kids helped her into this adventure. I just love to see those golden moments when all four kids are playing together and all of them are having a great time. The sound of four babes laughing together without a parent in there too is just awesome and amazing!
I hope there has been some awesome mixed in with all the regular life for you!
Oh and of course HAPPY BIRTHDAY Dan! I love you, thanks for being my sweetheart! And thanks for requesting a beach day for your birthday! XO

Under the moonlight at Moonlight!

Well Mom, Mary, and I ran out on all our boys and kids and went off to the Moonlight Amphitheatre! It was fun to be there, and fun to be with my mom and sister, we don't get to do that often!

Way back when, eons ago it feels, I lived and worked at Moonlight. Those 4 years during high school I probably saw all of the shows they did, some more than once. Talk about memories, crazy!

Anyway I thought I'd share this photo we snapped of ourselves on Mary's phone just before the show started, right after we stuffed our faces...there are just never very many photos of us these days!

Thanks Mom and Mary! XO

{this moment}

{this moment} - A Friday ritual. A single photo - no words - capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember.

Art in Life, Life in Art!

This morning as the kids and I, minus traveling Dan made our weekly pilgrimage to the farmers market with Leili on my back, Fern in the stroller laden with our soon to be full bags Riley meandering and Jake ever bouncing I was struck with the fact of how usually as we make our way through touching the avocados, tomatoes, raw wool, smelling the lavender, strawberries, and falafel what a blessing it is that my children can see artist here as a normal part of life. Not tucked away in a no touch museum, not made by some long gone genius; but there under a canopy they talk to the potter and touch his art, the young glass blower, the hippies with their beautiful organic produce (because really it is an art to grow such beautiful food). Then there is the fact that they are not just experiencing the art they are gleaning from the artist, the sweet older lady spinning raw wool, showing them, letting them touch it. The incredible dancing/playing/singing lady, "see Jake that is a fiddle, no not tap dancing, clogging can you hear the double tap with each movement"! Thankfully my children know that life is art and art is life even if I don't pull out those paints too often, and even when we are in a no touch exhibit.

Here is Leili's first finger painting session, she was the cutest canvas of all!!

{this moment}

{this moment} - A Friday ritual. A single photo - no words - capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember.

Just a few...

I've been holden out on! :)When Riley was at Scout Camp, (the ONE week this summer that it has been HOT) Jake, Fern, Leili, and I decided we needed an adventure! So we went to the (formally) Quail Botanical Garden (now just San Diego Botanical Garden), since we had heard they had fun children's gardens now. I had been there as a kid when I needed science projects having to do with native plants and such. Well WOW, not the same old place! We had tons of fun! Here is Leili climbing up the rope to the tree house!
Jake in the tree house!

And thankfully WATER to play in and float boats down, it was really hot!

Leili is quite a daddy's girl, she makes a beeline to Dan's tools whenever she gets in the garage! She has even fallen asleep holding screwdrivers!! :) Here she is helping Dan sand the box for my wonder oven!

Dan got talked into making a swing for the kids and while he was hanging it he put up the baby swing too, Leili is happy and so is every other kid in the neighborhood. The swing is very popular! :)

So Accuweather says that we will have a cool start to the week, so I am thinking it might snow because really could it be cooler in AUGUST in southern California? Crazy! We thought we would be having a fun summer at the beach, we went to the beach more in the spring, summer has been too cool! Crazy! But September is usually BLAZING here and everyone should have vacated the beaches for school so we will just enjoy it then!! :)

Dan is still without a full time job, don't worry you'll hear about a job as I am shouting from the rooftops! At the end of this month it will be 11 months, there are many prayers being offered often all day around here. We know there are amazing blessings coming we just have to get there (while keeping our sanity). Your prayers are all received gratefully, thank you for all your kind words and thoughts too!

Hope your Sabbath was good!

{this moment}

{this moment} - A Friday ritual. A single photo - no words - capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember. If you're inspired to do the same, leave a link to your 'moment' in the comments for all to find and see.

Utah!

Yea I am finally posting, enjoy!LONG car ride antics...
Silly pit stops... and then...

We got to hang out with Grandpa and Grandma!

Fern got to enjoy playing with cousins, of course she LOVES holding babies, here she is with Renia!

We also got to meet Raimey, just a few days old! I love this picture!

How sweet is she!!

This is our crazy cousin shot, from 9 years old to a few days old!!

L-R, Garen, Leili, Fern, Renia, Ashton, Adara, Jake, Tahlia, Ransom, Riley, & Raimey! Whew!
We also got a fun evening with cousins Mitch, who was somewhere around Riley's age when Dan and I got married, and Ashley, who is just a bit over a year younger than Riley so they got along just fine!! :)

While we were up North we went to Temple square to see a few things, Mom & Dad, and Laura and her kids went with us! While we were there I got to meet up with Cherish and she got to meet Leili for the first time! Here are the three of us!

This is us at the end of the Confrence Center tour we took with Grandma & Grandpa. It was SOOOO HOT and I was melting with Leili snoozing in the sling!!

It was great to see you all!!

~

After our fun we headed South...

And were greeted by these cheery cherries at Grandma's house!

My mom has connections and it just so happens that her good friend has a restored fire engine that was going to be in the parade, so grandma got us a ride! We had fun riding around town!!

Leili was surprised and so excited that grandma had a cat who liked her (our cats won't let Leili near them), here is Leili loven Stretch!

The main even of the trip was 4th of July, here is our little parade all decorated heading to the park!

Here is Leili in the walking race of the diaper derby, not racing. Not one step until after the race was called! Grandma and I tried everything!

Then there was the apples...

yes apples...

bobbing that is! Go grandpa!!

Wahoo Jake!

Even Fern!!

And Novella!

Aunt Mary even got talked into it!!

I have good pictures of Ryan and Riley bobbing too, but I'll have to fix them a bit first and well the computer (and my patience) are just not up for that right now! :)

Here are my sweet four all dressed up for the fourth! (Dan was in Rome, do you hear my violin it is really small!) And why it escaped us to get a cousin picture is beyond me, or even a group shot, oh well! :)

And of course here is Leili's first sparkler, she was not too sure of the bigger fireworks we set off, and slept through the BIG fireworks! :)

Back through the Virgin River Gorge!

Home again, home again, jiggity jog!

{this moment}

{this moment} - A Friday ritual. A single photo - no words - capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember. If you're inspired to do the same, leave a link to your 'moment' in the comments for all to find and see.

Big Fish!

So today I got to sneak away and go to Barnes and Noble to use some birthday gift card $$!! It was nice I did not even go into the children's section! I looked at a whole bunch of adult books!! Crazy!!

Anyway your probably wondering about this picture. Well these 4 cute old men came in and sat down with their coffee and snacks, you could tell they had been there often, together, "oh your going to sit there today". And you know how old men talk, a little loud so you could hear them through the whole store. And they talked about some current events, their opinions where fun to hear, and then it started. The BIG FISH stories! :) It was so fun to pretend to read books but listen to them instead, and snap a picture without them knowing! It reminded me of going to the coffee shop where my grandpa sat around with all of his old men buddies, where they would bug the waitress into giving me a second helping of whipped cream on my hot chocolate and pass me coins to buy lifesavers. Those old men are lucky I had babes to hurry home to otherwise I might have plopped down with them. :) I miss being a granddaughter!

{this moment}

{this moment} - A Friday ritual. A single photo - no words - capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember. If you're inspired to do the same, leave a link to your 'moment' in the comments for all to find and see.

Christmas in July!

I know I have been so bad about pictures from our road trip, my computer is on it's last leg and loading pictures from my camera has become almost completely UNBEARABLE!!! So you ask how have there been pictures here and there? Well I got lucky, super lucky. See my sister and brother in law got the fancy new iphones and I inherited one of their old iphones! So I have had fun having a little camera in my pocket, and I can just email them to myself and save them to my computer. Luckily that is still working! :)

~

Ok back on topic! On said road trip we got an early Christmas present from Dan's sisters and their families, Amanda and Laura (by the way gals I think having new babes and having your Christmas gifts done in July is way over achieving!!!)!!! :)

So what did we get? It was on my list!! A wonder oven!! What is a wonder oven you ask? I first read about them HERE and thought it was a cool idea (although I never did get moving on it, thanks for doing the work Laura and Amanda!)!! I used it this last week as it has been super hot and I did not want to have the stove on long enough to cook brown rice. So I brought it to a boil and then plopped it into the wonder oven and presto a couple hours later perfect rice!! Yea!! I just have to remember to work on dinner before dinner time!! :) I did run into one snapfoo, Leili was down for her nap and counter space is a premium here so I set it on the floor. Well you can imagine what happened after she got up! :) So I told Dan I needed something to put it in so I could move the oven, so he made me this pretty crate today! Yea for Dan and is great wood working skills!!

So thanks Laura and Amanda I know it is a Christmas gift but it is a wonderful summer gift!

{this moment}

{this moment} - A Friday ritual. A single photo - no words - capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember. If you're inspired to do the same, leave a link to your 'moment' in the comments for all to find and see. XO!

{this moment}

{this moment} - A Friday ritual. A single photo - no words - capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember.

2 since last week was a bust! :)